Giant mech/robot combat simulator, set in a sci-fi plot. You play a young man whose reputation has been soiled by an evil usurper. You have five years to build a force of giant robots and great pilots strong enough to attack your foe. Take on mercenary missions for any one of the 5 houses from the first generation world of FASA's BattleTech (Kurita, Davion, Steiner, Marik, Laio). The missions themselves take place in 3D rendered worlds, where you pilot your robot and its missles lasers and particle projection cannons against other robots of the same ilk.

MechWarrior was awesome, and stayed the best game in the FASA world for years.

Training to be a future warrior, steering your giant robot, that sure sounded fun. Graphics didn't have to be great - I wanted to drive into SciFi war.

It was thrilling at the time, but looking back it mostly foreshadowed fantastic gameplay elements - most likely due to limited technology. The role playing was primarily textual - reading paragraphs, choosing between fight or run, and then being killed or moving on accordingly. There was no deeper interaction.

The robot fighting was exciting, in a contained way. Combat usually lasted under 10-20 minutes because the maps were small, the opponents were few (<5) and the objectives limited to one (ie, eliminate your enemies; capture the base, etc.). You could have other units to order around - each of your mates could be ordered to attack or defend or back you up. Even with the rudimentary figures however, units could move and jump, occasionally enemies would surround you and effectively pound you into scrap.
If you were able to train your lasers on their heads, you might score a direct hit, or if you could attack their legs you might see a mech doing a one-legged hop. Heat was a factor - if you shot too much too fast, you might crash your system. These are all the elements that characterize the more sophisticated mech combat simulators (Mechwarrior 2, Mechwarrior 3), just with less dense graphics and more abbreviated gameplay.

While Mechwarrior 2 (Activision?) was a fantastic mech-combat sim, the role playing aspects were downgraded to "be a soldier in a war against the enemy, the outcome of which is determined by your actions." Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries supposedly added more intricate resource/team building play - I haven't gotten my hands on that yet.

Infocom's BattleTech 1, "Crescent Hawk's Inception," dating from the late eighties, was a game I greatly enjoyed at the time - role play, questing, roboting fighting, team building. Wandering cities on a large map with a giant robot was fun, combat consisted of selecting between "kick" or "missle" or "laser" from a menu and trying to smush enemy footsoldiers. Looking back, it was pretty limited, simple and easy. But it was all that was out there in the Battletech universe.

The FASA/MechWorld has yet to make a good integrated combat/role playing game.